A Shower for Baby Barbara

My sister-in-law, Jojo, is having a baby! You can read about how she announced it here.

The baby (which they call "Barbara")(even though they don't know if it's a boy or girl)(long story) is due at the beginning of November. This past weekend, I co-co-co-co-co-co-co-co hosted a shower for her! That's right-- there were eight co-hostesses.

Jojo had a specific invitation in mind... but when we went to get it... we found out they were discontinued! So I did my best to recreate them for her:

Doesn't it look so cute and simple? Well they are cute... but NOT simple! Those invites were a LABOR of love. Thankfully, Laura helped assemble them during the Patio weekend. But despite the hard work, we were happy to do them. Someday Jojo's baby will see it in a scrapbook and know that Aunt Katie and Aunt Laura worked very hard because we loved it even before it was born!

As an out-of-town co-hostess, I volunteered to do the non-edibles-- invites, plates, cups, etc. I'm not really a fan of plastic/paper plates, utensils, cups, etc... but we were using a house graciously donated by the parents of one of the co-hostesses. So we wanted to make sure we were as little of an intrusion as possible.

I decided to jazz the cups up with a nod to the invite:

Out of all the things I did for the shower, I was most proud of this (and it was the most time-consuming) but wouldn't you know, people barely seemed to notice! I noticed and Jojo noticed-- so that's all that matters. But it made me giggle when someone would comment on the easy stuff I did and not the more intricate stuff!

Speaking of less-intricate... in the background you'll notice the gathered streamers I made:

(From my favorite blog, Made.)

And here were the utensil packs:

I used the colors (and the same ribbon) from the invitation. I was having a hard time getting a bow to look good, so I did a little tuck method and secured them with glue dots. That worked fairly well.

But enough about me... check out what the other co-hostesses brought!

Yummy cupcakes from Dory:

Adorable cookies from Cissy:

Fresh flowers from Laura:

And my favorite... a family tree! (From Laura):

She spray-painted a branch, then hung photos of the parents-to-be from when they were babies. Really cute idea!

The other hostesses really did a lot of work with their food and projects too (and everyone agreed that the food was amazing... ), but I'm running out of photo room... so I'll just show you a shot of the buffet:

And now... the guest of honor!

Jojo got a lot of really cute items for Baby Barbara-- so much so that we had to open gifts in two rounds! We needed a break half-way through!

Jojo's pal is also due around the same time, so here they are with their baby bellies:

Cute, no?

Here is Jojo again with most of the hostesses.

 It was a sweet time of fellowship with the ladies and I'm excited for the day that we can tell the little baby all about it!